Co-ops Superior to Corporations
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.progressive.org/mag/pal082109.html
Co-ops Superior to Corporations
By Amitabh Pal
August 21, 2009
The term �co-op� has gained greater currency than any time since the
early 1970s, as the Obama Administration seems to have fallen back on
nonprofit health cooperatives as a substitute for the more politically
explosive public insurance option. The problem in this case is that the
Obama team has failed to outline what exactly these health cooperatives
would look like, and how they could compete with the insurance behemoths.
But in general, co-ops are not only morally superior to for-profit
corporations, they are also more efficient.
Let�s start by defining co-ops.
�Cooperatives are an autonomous association of persons united
voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and
aspirations, through a jointly owned and democratically controlled
enterprise,� states the International Cooperative Alliance.
�Apart from the investors of capital, there are three main stakeholders
in a business: its consumers, the producers who supply inputs to or take
the outputs from the business, and its employees,� the International
Labor Organization elaborates. �In a cooperative, usually one of these
stakeholders is put at the center of the business.�
Even President Obama�s half-hearted scheme has done some good in
bringing out the multiple benefits of cooperatives.
Professor Ann Hoyt of the University of Wisconsin cites the success of
credit unions in forcing banks to offer better and cheaper services, and
says that well-designed health co-ops could serve the same function
vis-�-vis for-profit health care companies.
Co-ops are a much bigger part of the economy than many people realize.
�In a study published in March and financed in part by the federal
government, Professor Hoyt and other researchers at the University of
Wisconsin identified nearly 30,000 cooperatives with revenues of more
than $650 billion a year,� report the New York Times. �They include farm
co-ops, retail food co-ops, rural telephone and electric co-ops and
credit unions -- entities as diverse as Ace Hardware, The Associated
Press, Blue Diamond Growers (almonds), Carpet One, Land O�Lakes (dairy
products), Ocean Spray (cranberries) and Sun-Maid Growers (raisins).�
New York Times columnist Timothy Egan is a big fan of cooperatives,
trumpeting their value in his part of the country.
�All over the West, people get their electricity, their hardware, their
water from co-ops, and sell their apples, their wheat, their medical
services in the same way,� writes Egan. �I can see why Senator Kent
Conrad, the Democrat from North Dakota, has been pushing co-ops. They
come out of the prairie progressive tradition.�
Now there�s concrete evidence that co-ops are working well throughout
the world, and not just in the United States. A recent International
Labor Organization report shows how they�ve weathered the global
downturn much better than their supposedly efficient for-profit
counterparts.
�The financial and ensuing economic crisis has had negative impacts on
the majority of enterprises; however, cooperative enterprises around the
world are showing resilience to the crisis,� the authors of the report
write. �Financial cooperatives remain financially sound; consumer
cooperatives are reporting increased turnover; worker cooperatives are
seeing growth as people choose the cooperative form of enterprise to
respond to new economic realities.�
This isn�t completely surprising if you�ve been following the news.
After all, how many co-ops have you heard of asking for government handouts?
Still, it�s nice to have the proof on paper. The ILO authors provide
further service by offering reasons for the robustness of cooperatives.
�Cooperatives are uniquely member-owned, member-controlled and exist to
provide benefits to members as opposed to profit, and this has an impact
on business decisions,� they write. �When the purposes of the business
are aligned with those of members who are both investors and consumers
of the cooperative, the results are loyalty, commitment, shared
knowledge, member participation, underpinned by strong economic incentives.�
In other words, cooperatives are flourishing because they offer the
right moral incentives, instead of greed and selfishness -- the
foundations of the corporate culture that have brought the entire global
economy to its knees.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
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